Monuments to Migration
The Grinder 1
This project used a fictional proposal to set up a Monument to Migration in the Brick Lane area as a heuristic device to think about migration. Four unconventional designs were proposed. The two designs featuring the migrant perspective were conventionally monumental constructions reflecting the languages and physical distribiution of the communities in Tower Hamlets; the two designs featuring the perspective of settled/indigenous communities were kinetic constructions made up of sliding plates rubbing against each other creating friction and a lot of noise.
Exhibited first at the About Brick Lane exhibition in 2014 and again as part of the New Home exhibition at the East London Arts Pavilion in 2016 as part of the continuing conversation with the public. Visitors were asked to propose their own monumnent to migration. |
The Grinder 2
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Through other eyes
Social order has an aesthetic, its consumption a form of pleasure which we in the West rarely register or appreciate. In this installation, a screen shows scenes from ordinary city life (people enjoying the sunshine in a park, having a picnic, people travelling, rubbish being collected, tree maintenance in a street). Juxtaposed against this is a boat, crammed with humanity, suggestive of those used by refugees to escape calamities as well as the transatlantic slave ships. The boat and the screen inhabit different worlds, but whereas the boat seems aware of the scenes being played before it, the screen inhabitants are totally oblivious of the serenity of their lives and the social order they take for granted but which makes this life possible.
Outing the Saris
The artist's mother’s saris were taken for an outing in Trafalgar Square. The Saris participated in a simple set of movements involving their folding and unfolding, a process which he learnt as a small child helping his mother fold her saris. It was a collective public enactment of a personal domestic ritual. By occupying quite a large space and placing the quintessentially Indian feminine garments next to the Fourth Plinth and at the heart of the Old Empire he wanted to subvert its bloated pretensions while discovering new meanings and associations for the saris.
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